Navigating DOS menus

I keep discovering that the ExoPC is better designed than I previously believed.

Because it’s a Windows OS, it sometimes doesn’t shut-down properly and when you boot it up again, you get a text-based DOS menu asking you to take action. But because it’s a tablet, there’s no keyboard or mouse and the touch-screen interface doesn’t work, so it is seemingly impossible to interact with a DOS-based menu system. The few times this has come up, I was at a loss to know what to do, so I just let the timer runout and make its own selection.

Yesterday, I got a boot message where I was forced to make a choice (there was no timeout), so I was stuck. After rebooting several times and getting the same message, I was about to hit the ExoPC forums to hunt for an answer when I made my discovery.

In the top left corner of the ExoPC, there is a small mysterious orange circle. By sliding your thumb over this circle, you can move up or down a list of options in DOS, just like pressing the Up or Down arrows on a keyboard. Tapping the orange circle is like pressing the Enter key.

Now when faced with a DOS menu that has no mouse interface, I can scroll through my options by sliding my thumb over the orange circle and tapping it to make my choice. Awesome! Kudos to the ExoPC team for coming up with such an elegant solution to this thorny problem.

And although it’s a bit late, Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, and Happy New Year to all!